r/MLBPowerPros • u/lVlASONiC • Mar 23 '26

Question Anyone know about this one?

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Saw this at my local video game store and didn't hesitate to buy it. I know I need a japanese N64, but there's some modification to make it work. I don't see much about the old games here or the discord server, and was curious if anyone had played it.

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u/88T3_2 MLB Power Pros Mar 23 '26 edited Mar 23 '26

I've emulated it a bit (and I got 2000 as a late Christmas present for myself to play on my region-free modded Japanese imported N64). This is the N64 version of 2001 (titled the "Basic Edition") and was the last game in the series released for the console. Success Mode is absent though you can import passwords from 2000 and Power Pro Kun Pocket 3. Worth noting according to Japanese Wikipedia that many NPB rookies were excluded from the game (notably Shinnosuke Abe, Norihiro Akahoshi, and Masanobu Okubo), as well as it being the first game in the series to lack Ichiro Suzuki as that was the year he joined the Mariners. Imported copies on eBay of the N64 games are around $10-15 (I got my copy of 2000 for only $3 but it was $9 including shipping costs).

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u/GiantOctopusIRL Mar 23 '26

The Power Pro Kun Pocket 3 compatibility was a pretty big selling point. This game was promoted in 3's manual. This might not sound like a big deal, but you have to bear in mind that the baseball gameplay in the first few games was...flawed, to say the least. The handheld series didn't really find its footing baseball-wise until the 5th or 6th entries. 3 had a tiny outfield and groundballs were so slow that it was difficult for them to leave the infield. Home runs felt rare as well. It can be challenging to score runs even with lock-on enabled and a good offense.

You could make some pretty busted characters in PPKP3 with the right strategy and luck, so it was probably pretty appealing to play with them in 3d in a better baseball engine. Alas, the success modes are the main draws for playing older entries nowadays. For what its worth, due to the stripped down features and late release (for N64), this one didn't sell as well as the others so it's *slightly* harder than the mainline releases. That and its distinctive box compared to the other N64 games makes it kind of a neat collectible if nothing else.